Central Michigan looks to turn around fortunes as it hosts NIU

Now is not the time to panic for the Central Michigan University baseball team.

Sure, the Chippewas are sitting at 2-4 in Mid-American Conference play and are coming off a couple losses to Michigan State and Michigan in non-conference action.

But there are still seven conference series’ left to make some headway, plenty of time to do something similar to last season when CMU was sitting at 7-9 in the MAC before reeling off nine consecutive conference wins to nearly take the West Division crown.

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The Chippewas have a chance to begin the climb up from their current spot in the cellar this weekend as they take on Northern Illinois (9-17, 4-2) in a three-game set at Theunissen Stadium. Game one begins Friday at 3:05 p.m., while the middle game is Saturday at 2:05 p.m. and the series finale Sunday at 1:05 p.m.

“We only have four home series’ and this is our second one, so we just want to play like we did last week but just have the results a little bit different,” said Central Michigan coach Steve Jaksa.

The Chippewas hit the ball hard at times in its home series versus Bowling Green last weekend, but fell into some bad luck as to where the hard-hit balls were aimed at as many of them fell into outs. A sweep was avoided, however, and now CMU has the opportunity to build up some conference momentum in the next three games against the Huskies.

Northern Illinois is tied for first place in the MAC West Division with Western Michigan and boasts one of the stronger pitching staffs in the conference, led by junio Eli Anderson (3-3, 2.79 ERA, 48 1/3 IP). Anderson has thrown complete games the last two Saturdays, while freshman Jordan Ruckman (0-4, 3.25 ERA, 44 1/3 IP) has gotten the call as the Friday starter.

“When we look at Northern Illinois, we see a really good pitching staff,” Jaksa said. “They have a really good No. 1 guy just like we do. They are going to run him out there and let him go a little bit, so we need to be equal to the task offensively. We also just need to play good defense because I don’t think they are going to score a lot of runs. That’s kind of been the history, so we need to make sure we are in good position to play solid defense.”

The Huskies are coming off a road sweep of Akron as they outscored the Zips 20-8 over the three games. Junior infielder Jeff Zimmerman leads the NIU offense with a .330 batting average as well as nine doubles and three triples.

Central Michigan sophomore standout Jordan Foley will get the Friday start as he comes in with a 4-1 record and a 0.94 ERA in 48 innings. Dylan Rheault (1-1, 6.26 ERA, 23 IP) will take the place of injured Patrick Kaminska for Saturday’s game, while Rick Dodridge (1-3, 2.45 ERA, 33 IP) gets the ball Sunday.